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Topic: Why "anonymous" beacons on 22 m? (Read 471 times)

I don't understand the appeal of putting a signal on the air, then leaving listeners to discover it on their own, never knowing what town or even the state/province it's coming from, let alone who the operator is or how to let them know they're being heard.

There may be some survival value to anonymity if you're making up your own rules at a clandestine station in the desert or something, but 22 m is a great band for experimental modes, propagation studies, camaraderie among those who relish a challenge, etc. So why hide? Why not do like WCK, BNC1, J1LPB and other recent additions who let the community know of their existence here and/or at lwca.org/mb soon after they went on?

Just throwing together a circuit board and going on the air without publishing any accompanying information is about as useful as the following reception report:

"I copied one of the latest unknowns early Sunday afternoon, after it faded up from poor audibility to a strong and steady signal for several minutes. A lot of IDs per minute made it a little hard for the ear to sync up until reception became good enough, but then it was easy copy. The frequency was nearly 800 Hz higher than recently reported in this forum. It was heard at the same time that some other stations were present whom I won't mention, and gone some unspecified time later in the afternoon, which allowed me to make a rough guess of its geographic origin, which I'll also neglect to mention along with my own QTH."

Those are actual facts about an actual logging, but without the few key items I omitted, it's exactly as useless to the operator of the beacon, as only knowing the call sign and approximate frequency is to serious listeners. How about it, guys. We've got these great online resources available, so why not make use of them?

That's a good point, Prariedog, I don't think anyone would know to put up a 22 m beacon without having encountered HFU or LWCA etc. - After all, why would one run a beacon without being able to know if it was received elsewhere?